golden days
by swanfrost
Summary: In which all good things come to an end – but that doesn't mean you can't have a happy ending. [for ruroken week 2016 on tumblr. prompt: childhood/innocence.]


**summary:** in which all good things come to an end – but that doesn't mean you can't have a happy ending.

 **a/n:** Written for rurouni kenshin week 2016 on tumblr! The prompt was childhood/innocence. I looked up the symptoms of cholera, but that's pretty much it...apologies for any medical inconsistencies.

* * *

 **golden days**

When Kenshin is five years old, he thinks that he will live forever. He is not quite _kenshin_ yet – still _shinta_ – still young and soft, surrounded by kindness and love. His family makes their home in a quiet farming village at the foot of a mountain, and naught disturbs them but the occasional wayward traveler and the steady spring rains. It is in the midst of a small, tight-knit community that he grows up, a soft-spoken boy with a gentle smile.

Sometimes, Shinta accompanies his father out into the fields, tottering after the man with a basket to collect fruits from the gardens or leading oxen to plow the planting fields. It is not the most enjoyable of tasks, but he carries them out with grace. Now, Kenshin does not remember much of his father, except that he was a strong man with a booming laugh. He remembers watching the man's sturdy back as he followed him throughout the day – never wavering, never faltering.

More often, Shinta stays at home, helping his mother with household chores or running errands. His build is not as stocky as his friend Izuki down the road – at the age of seven, Izuki is already toiling in the fields with his own father, and the mothers often joke that the boy could eat a horse for every meal. Sometimes, he asks his mother if it is wrong for him to sit inside as others work the day away, but his mother simply ruffles his hair and soothes him – she needs him here with her, after all. Who else would help her wash the clothes or feed the chickens or cook a hearty meal for his father to come home to?

Kenshin remembers a bit more of his mother – a warm smile, hands a different kind of rough from the men. She would often wear her long hair in a bun and pull his own into a small ponytail, a habit which carried on into his adolescent years. He remembers that her voice was soft, melodic, something he often fell asleep to – although he cannot recall the exact tone or lilt, or even what stories she told and what songs she sung.

But Kenshin knows that he was happy. To his five-year old self, those days continued on forever. It was just him and his village, living in a steady happiness.

* * *

When Shinta is six, he watches his neighbors die, one by one by one. First, it is a drought that wipes out half of the village's fields. He first sees the extent of the drought on a day he follows his father, gripping the man's large hand tightly as he steps over the hard, cracked earth. Shiny black beetles scurry underfoot and the harsh call of vultures echoes through the sky. Silently, he watches his father bend down and scoop the gritty dirt into his hand, frowning at both the dirt and nothing in particular. After the Yamamoto family dies in their sleep, some of the villagers pack their bags and leave for the city.

"What will happen to us?" the boy asks his parents at dinner, where his serving size has shrunk only a smidge, but his mother and father seem to inhale their meager food in a single breath.

"We will be fine," his father rumbles. "We will survive."

And because his father had never been wrong before, Shinta nods and finishes his dinner in silent acceptance.

* * *

Then – it is war. Small border skirmishes between two feuding families burst into flames, and hordes of howling samurai thunder through the land, uncaring of what they trample over. The winter before his seventh birthday, Shinta crouches in his house's underground cellar, half buried in sacks of potatoes and old kitchenware. Beside him, his mother shivers and they huddle together for warmth and comfort as a terrible howling rages on above them. Through the thick wooden hatch, they hear the terrible pounding of boots and the muted echoes of things smashing and breaking. With each noise, his mother pulls Shinta even closer to her bosom. Shinta flinches at a particularly loud crash, but he feels safe in his mother's arms. When he reaches out for her shaking hand, it is more for her comfort than his.

When all is silent, Shinta's mother crawls out first, struggling to push the hatch up. She finally succeeds, breath labored, and they hear a sharp clattering of _something_ that falls. They climb out and Shinta sucks in a sharp breath.

Their house is trashed, furniture broken and overturned, ragged holes littering the walls. The patterned flower vase him and his father had bought from a travelling merchant for his mother's birthday lays shattered on the floor, pretty wildflowers trampled to shreds. Blood and feathers are splattered on the doorframe, and Shinta peeks into their backyard to see that all of their chickens are either dead or gone.

In the midst of the chaos, snow had begun to fall, and now, the ground is coated in a thin layer of white. Behind him, his mother calls for his father, worry seeping into her voice. Shinta curls his little fists and straightens his back and tries to be brave. He tells her that perhaps his father is outside, helping others who have been hurt worse than them.

His mother wraps him in a jacket that has somehow escaped the samurai's rampages and they step out into the snow together. They pass a sobbing mother bowed over _something_ – Shinta tries not to peek because that's rude, but he catches a glimpse of a small, pale hand. The snow around them bleeds. His own mother pushes him onward.

(In the end, they find his father at the edge of the village, terrified and tense, but alive and relatively unscathed. His mother throws herself onto him, crying like Shinta has never seen before, but he does not think too much of it as he is pulled into a bone-crushing hug.

"We will survive," his father whispers into his ear, tears staining his shirt.

The others are not so lucky. They bury a record number of bodies that coming spring.)

* * *

By the time his seventh birthday rolls around, the village has begun to rebuild. To everyone's delight, the drought seems to have subsided, and the fields are growing again. His mother dresses him in his nicest clothes and sets out the pretty porcelain plates she saves for special occasions, never mind that they are chipped at the edges. They eat the nicest meal Shinta has tasted in a long time, his parent's gentle conversation blurred by the incessant buzzing of cicadas outside. Friends and neighbors come to send him well-wishes, and Shinta smiles so wide he feels like he is glowing. Izuki from down the road claps him on the shoulder, hard, and teases him, saying that he expects to see him in the fields sometime soon.

It's not like Shinta has grown any more muscular, but he laughs anyways. To him, the happy days have returned, and he thinks that he can only climb up from here.

* * *

But oh, the fates are cruel.

* * *

A couple weeks after his birthday, a little girl named Satsuki falls sick. Shinta has played with her a couple of times, and is about to ask if he can go see her, but the worried furrow between his mother's eyes causes the request to die in his throat. Even when he asks his parents about Satsuki, they simply pat his head and tell him she will be fine.

One day, one of his mother's friends drops by to visit. They sit in the kitchen and gossip, and Shinta cannot help but sneak to the doorway and listen. He catches their fervid whispers, some words that he does not know, some he does, like _vomiting_ and _blue_ and _cannot breathe_. Glancing quickly into the room, he sees his mother bury her head into her hands. Shinta's stomach drops to his feet and he quickly escapes.

The next day, Satsuki dies. They do not let anyone near her, and two men wearing thick gloves and white face masks carry her body out of the village. Murmurs of _contagious_ , _plague_ , and _no cure_ , follow him home.

* * *

The village's only doctor dies a few days after.

* * *

The villagers begin falling sick at an increasingly rapid rate after that. His mother keeps him in the house and instructs him to stay clean. Corpses begin to appear on the roads – there are not enough people to bury the dead. Shinta is not scared, not really – he is seven years old, not quite old enough to fully absorb his surroundings, but he carefully watches his parents spiral into anxiety.

"Be careful," his mother whispers to his father, before the sun has fully risen. Soft sunlight slants through the window, and his father squeezes her hand in promise and leaves for the fields.

(Shinta believes that they will survive.)

* * *

One day, his father comes home with his face twisted in a wince. "I've been sore all day," he grumbles, "Sometimes my arm or leg just spasms. It's been a real nuisance."

That night, Shinta wakes to the wretched sound of someone hurling. He clutches his blanket, the first inklings of fear clawing at his chest – because that sounded like his father, his strong, invincible father –

Rolling out of bed, the boy slips through his house into the kitchen, where his father is throwing up into a bucket, his mother rubbing soothing circles into his back. They don't hear him approach the doorway, and Shinta quickly hides himself before they see him.

"I don't, I don't know why," his father gasps, wiping his mouth with a rag. "I just, just – "

He sees his mother bite her lip. "Are you alright?" she whispers, and their conversation turns rough and erratic. Shinta sneaks back into his bedroom and tries to forget.

* * *

In the morning, his father does not go to the fields. Instead, he spends an hour outside, squatting over their toilet (a hole in the ground). Then, he collapses back into bed, complaining of dizziness and muscle cramps. This alternating cycle continues for the rest of the day. His mother fusses over him, leaving cold washcloths over his forehead, coaxing water down the man's throat. A bucket stands by his bed, and more often than not, Shinta hears the nauseating splatter of sick.

Shinta is forbidden to see his father, but when his mother isn't looking, he stands by the doorway and looks in, taking in his father's closed eyes, pale face, labored breathing – the way his arm lays limply by his side, the way tear seem to gather at the corners of his eyes. Shinta's fingers curl into the doorframe and – and for the first time, Shinta is terrified down to his very bones.

* * *

Two days later, his mother falls sick with the same symptoms – muscle spasms and cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting. Shinta obtains a pair of gloves and a face mask from a neighbor and tries his best to wipe down the sweat clinging to his mother's forehead, to massage his father's limbs, to clean the buckets of vomit and make watery soup for them to drink. Fear claws at his throat and blurs his vision. His hands shake when they pull the blankets up over his parents.

As the days pass, Shinta watches in desperation as his parents' movements slow. Even the vomiting and frequent trips to the toilet have subsided, but their hollow cheekbones and sunken eyes do not relieve his worry at all. In fits of distress, Shinta thinks that he sees his parent's skin tinged with blue. No one knows what this illness is, or what is causing it. There are not enough adults in the village left to keep order either, and it is only luck that Shinta's house has not been raided yet. He and his family are one of the few still alive.

* * *

One evening, as the sun is slipping below the horizon, throwing red across the sky, Shinta crouches by his mother's bedside, helping her sit up and drink water. When she finishes, instead of lying down again, she grasps Shinta's hand.

"Shinta," she whispers. He feels the lightness of her hand, as if he could crush it with a simple squeeze, runs his fingers over the wrinkled skin (there shouldn't be wrinkles, he thinks belatedly. His mother did not have these wrinkles before she became sick).

"Mother," he says, fighting down his sadness, "You should rest."

* * *

Kenshin does not remember what she said to him after that, or what his father weakly chimed in with. All he knows is that once they settled down for the night, they did not wake up again.

* * *

Shinta, too weak to carry the bodies anywhere, digs out their best blankets and bedsheets. He pulls out his mother's best kimono and his father's best yukata, laying it over their still bodies. With shivering hands, he wraps his mother in a soft, flower-printed blanket and his father in a beautiful white sheet with glimmering gold patterns hand-stitched onto it; a birthday present from his mother to his father. It is surprisingly easy to maneuver the blanket around his father. The sickness had stolen much of his body mass, and Shinta easily rolls his father to tuck the edges of the blanket under him.

After – afterward, when everything has been done and there is simply nothing else he can do, Shinta settles onto his knees and stills, fingers curled into the fabric of his pants, shoulders and head bowed. Slowly, the reality of the situation sinks into his skin, into his bones. His parents are dead. His village is destroyed. His home is gone. He is a child, only a child in this great, big world. He is alone.

Silent tears slide down his cheeks.

-/-

It is not long before the slave traders arrive, kicking down the front door with mad cackles.

"I told you," a voice sneers, "This village was practically wiped out by the plague. Even the people who were left are probably on the verge of death. Best we leave before _we_ catch it too."

"Well," a second person grunts, "We're here anyways, might as well try and make a profit."

Shinta dully registers them trampling through the house, kicking and shoving things. Rowdily, they tumble into the bedroom where Shinta sits, unmoving.

"Well damn," one snickers, "Look what we got here!"

They roughly shove him to his feet, squinting and prodding at him. "Seems healthy," the slave trader says. "Come on kid, you're ours now."

Slapping cold cuffs onto his wrists, they push him out, but not before one spits on his mother's corpse. "These are some nice sheets," the man says. "But I'd rather not get sick and die for a piece of pretty cloth."

Then – they lead him through the winding streets that he once knew and loved, past the baker's shop, past Izuki's house (door blasted into smithereens, walls crumbling, the smell of death strong even from the streets), past the little road that led to the fruit gardens, into a covered caravan. Inside, Shinta sees vague figures shift in the dim light of the caravan. He bites his lips and tries not to cry out.

"In you go," the slave traders sing, and Shinta falls forward into the darkness.

-/-

"I am a dad," Kenshin blurts, hands falling limp by his sides. "I am a _father_."

"Yes, Kenshin," Megumi snaps, fresh from the delivery, and rightfully frazzled. Kaoru is still in the bedroom, tended to by another nurse. "That is usually what we call the man who sires a child."

"I have a _son_ ," Kenshin says, more quietly this time. Megumi smacks a hand to her forehead.

"Come in and see him," she says, gesturing to the room, "Maybe you'll finally snap out of it then."

He follows her into the room, where Kaoru, looking exhausted, is holding a lump of …something. Kenshin steps forward and crouches down beside her. The lump is a tiny baby boy, eyes scrunched closed as he sleeps against his mother's chest.

Kenshin suddenly cannot speak.

"Kenji," Kaoru whispers, "I want to name him Kenji."

"Yeah," Kenshin says, "Yeah. I like the sound of that."

In her arms, Kenji stirs, content.

 **FIN**

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 **a/n:** liked it? hated it? got something to say? please do drop a review on your way out!


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